vol VII: Notes
1982
Notes
[ Sunday 19 December 1982 - Saturday 25 December 1982 ]
notebook DREAMING DB1
[page 93]
Sunday 19 December 1982
B I cry for you. Comfort me now. My mind is full of memories, happy and beautiful, producing sadness through loss - playing the mandolin in the sunlight house, pissing record distances of the edge of the verandah, your face undergoing infnite liquid changes as we sit and talk stoned; . . . dancing in the house; in the bush; swimming.; studying; working on your car; standing; sitting, walking, talking, laughing, living. Where are you now? Where is
[page 94]
Nefertiti's cat; will I ever find you again, or your like; so beautiful, vivacious, intelligent, skilful; hard to fathom, small, hurt, aggressive, wilful, pig-headed, delicate, gentle, strong, soft. I love you a lot. I am sad that you did not live longer. . . . . You are gone and I am desperately lost and sad. My mind retains a grip of the realities of life and death, history and evolution, growth and decay but my feelings are broken, my eyes wet and sore. The pain will go away and the pleasant memories remain. Tomorrow I go to see you for the last time, to take your photo for the first time, to kiss you until we meet again. The river flows, the trees are green, building new forms of life from the sun. As long as there is energy in the Universe, you can come again. Where are you now? Does the Universe store its dead in life? Are you still in existence, or are you gone forever, only in the memory of the living, in your photos, notebooks, possibly some tapes of your voice. I love you.
What a complex relationship we had. Never enough time to communicate. Even when we talked half the night, there was always unfinsihed business. There is a lifetime of sharing
[page 95]
left and where are you? The sadness is still very near. So much effort has gone into explaining and unravelling the events of life. So many hypothetical gods and demons, synchronicity, etc etc etc, but the best evidence seems to point to many events that are essentially random. That a truck should be behind you at that point, that the driver should mistake B's signal, that B did not see the truckie's intention etc etc, each of these events a consequence of a thousand others, and there you are, dying on the road. Here I am going through your rooms, your car, your books, sadly coming to terms with your absence, looking for more clues about you, still trying to capture the pleasure of knowing you better.
That stuff's all OK, but little B, my tears still ask why did you have to die. I want you back. I cannot yet bow to realty.
We are born to hypothesise. There is great selective advantage in distilling a meaningful generalisation out of a morass of data. But we seek also laws where none are to be found, explanations where there is only noise, form where there is only chaos, so we come to give structure to luck, to fate. We come to invent religions, old and new, gods and hope.
[page 96]
Faced with the abyss of death, we build a comforting road to the aferlife. Is it really there? I used to think so, and death was easy then. Now I don't and the solid emptiness I feel overwhelms me.
The algebraic sum of the parts of the Universe is nothing. Only through form or structure is the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Twenty seven years you have grown more complex, structured and beautiful. Now on the cold slab life isgone, you are disintegrating, becoming food for microorganisms. I would like to keep your skull - how to do that. Such a small thing can stop a complex system. Bonum ex integro ... . B I am distraught. Come back, please.
Monday 20 December 1982
. . .
Tuesday 21 December 1982
Wednesday 22 December 1982
[page 97]
Sociobiology of emotion. Selection for grief, sadness, depression. Pain of death is an incentive to life.
Thursday 23 December 1982
Monday went to hospital and cried over you. Your face so serene, untoched. To the park then back at 12 to find G, J and M to put you in coffin. Anointed you with rosemary, lined the coffin with one of your batiks. Your body almost unmarked, head damaged by post mortem. Tried to read PM but illegible. Could you have been saved? Too late now. Lifted your beautiful body into the box, shoulders still, broad, cold. Lifted your head, cold moisture from your wound on my hand. We then took turns to screw down the lid, load you into S's truck for the journey up the mountain (why am I telling you all this - memories). Then to pub for steak and a few beers, and to B's funeral. Very good. Read the wrong lesson, but everybody too polite to tell me. Rumors get around. Then to mill. . . .. Arrived in time to see the first clods go in. Didn't help with filling hole, too sad yet for me. I stood alone in the sun crying then holding J and other people. Buried in the earth. Went to B' to collect your books and letters and bring them back here. . . . Home. Can't remember what I did
[page 97]
then.
Tuesday went to valley to do some more brickwork. A long, overcast day, back in an outside way of life as normal, and got a lot done.
Wednesday did the head on the mini, played with the children, cleaned out your vehicle, . . . This day I let you go in my mind, no more wanting you back or holding you down. I have tried to be Platonic and leave you free, but one can always learn to be stronger, gentler, more perceptive. The bigger the instrument, the finer the resolution.
. . .
[page 99]
. . .
Friday 24 December 1982
Christmas Eve
I looked at the stars as I pissed tonight and wondered about the Universe. B I miss you. Tonight free night at the restaurant., Jimmy and the boys playing, and there was your beautiful self, your form, the flowing beauty of your movement. Where was all this? Gone. I cried a lot. What can I do? Again and again I know what has really happened, but fantasy, the inner person, will not see it.
. . .
[page 100]
What a small change in your life would have led to your continued life. So it is past. How long will I grieve? The feeling is there, not immobilising, but deep and real, and slightly lonely, because our interaction was so priuvate, who can really understand how I feel? . . .
The dance makes me feel your loss so strongly. There seems to be a continual conversation in my head with you. I will write at least bits out for all to see. What am I doing? What is life? I suppose we know now many of the answers, but they are very hard. Though I write of you in the first person, it is my memory of you I speak. You are gone and that is that. I love your memory as deary as I loved you, pure for being unrequited, strong as death. You will come again. Not as yourself., but fragmentarily, in the personalities of other people. Such is the nature of the evolution of life. Comfort me now, knowledge.
She's dead, that warm and lovely creature. The only respite is in sleep. When will you come to me again, how
[page 101]
will you come again. Can the theoretical framework stand the strain? Do tears help. Why aren't you here to comfort me?
Saturday 25 December 1982
Christmas day
S's for drinks, H'party - usual mob there. The sadness hangs around me. I suppose you would not like me to stay down about you for too long, but that's the way it is. I suppose it is a measure of the confidence I had in my love and hope for your work and our friendship that leads me to miss you so much. Everyone seems to have taken it with reasonable equanimity. I think if someone I had not known well had died, even of those who live here it would not be so bad. Of course it is my close relationship with you that leads to such feeling of loss. I find I must still address you in the first person. Still you dance in my memory. I kiss you and hug you and resolve to make manifest to (I hope the) the good of the Universe, those things learnt from you and the joys you brought me. The time is coming close for me to write more. The time is coming when my confidence that I have something to say will be strong enough for me to begin to put my vision to the world. Your life and death have been
[page 102]
quite important to me in the interpretation of life.
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Time reversal/travel.
